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It's a Team's Life

Credit Rating / Insurance

By Linda Caffee
Posted May 15th 2019 7:37AM

While talking to a friend the other day who sold insurance before entering the exciting world of trucking we talked about credit scores.

He was in insurance before credit scores were used and he talked about his thoughts of when this all came about. Like just about everyone he could not believe his company was going to have him start looking at credit scores before pricing a policy. To say the least, he was appalled until he researched a bit more and saw the correlation between good credit and a few insurance claims.

I found this example on consumer reports:

And your credit score could have more of an impact on your premium price than any other factor. For our single drivers in Kansas, for instance, one moving violation would increase their premium by $122 per year, on average. But a score that was considered just good would boost it by $233, even if they had a flawless driving record. A poor credit score could add $1,301 to their premium, on average.

In the above example a poor credit score even with no accidents the insurance company still considers you to a be a bad risk. It became apparent over time that the people that had the excellent credit scores were the people that had the least claims and took care of many items themselves.

After a time what my friend noticed most often was that a tidy person usually had a very good credit score.

Your credit score is only one thing that is used to determine premiums, but I found that this part of the premium is something we control ourselves.

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